Mandela was a man who 'made the weather', to use Churchill’s phrase

To grasp Nelson Mandela’s place in history, remember a winter’s day in 1986 when South Africa’s beleaguered white government declared a nationwide state of emergency. At that moment, riots were sweeping the black townships, convincing millions of South Africans that a cataclysmic race war was inevitable. The spectacle of police in armoured cars confronting furious youths, detaining thousands without charge or trial, seemed to herald the opening shots of that conflict.

And yet the bloodbath was avoided. Within a decade, black and white South Africans were not killing one another, but queuing peaceably to vote in a democratic election that elevated Mandela to the presidency. In his words, South Africa passed from “skunk of the world” to “rainbow nation”.

This regal, assured and self-contained man would never have claimed sole credit for this transformation. F W de Klerk, the last white president, had the steely courage and realism to understand that apartheid was practically and morally indefensible. Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer were the tireless frontline negotiators who did the heavy lifting that led to majority rule. A raft of figures, ranging from Thabo Mbeki to Chief Buthelezi and Jacob Zuma, all deserve their share of the credit. So, too, does the almost forgotten Constand Viljoen, a venerable Afrikaner general who dealt with Mandela as one chief to another and chose, at the crucial moment, to drop his demand for a separate Afrikaans-speaking homeland.

Yet each would acknowledge that one man — and one alone — was indispensable. In the end, Nelson Mandela saved his country. Mandela, the prisoner for 27 years; Mandela, the masterly politician; Mandela, the healer and conciliator; Mandela, the tough negotiator, prepared to go to the brink — this Mandela was the man who rose to the level of events and guided South Africa’s miraculous rebirth.

In retrospect, his life had a Churchillian aura of destiny. The “what ifs” are numerous and tantalising. Suppose Mandela had stayed in his ancestral village in rural Transkei, instead of fleeing an arranged marriage for Johannesburg? Might he have lived out his days as a Xhosa chief in a remote backwater? Once in the big city, what if he had never encountered Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo? Would Mandela still have become a pillar of the African National Congress? And would Mandela have achieved the peaceful birth of majority rule without enduring those decades behind bars? The answer is probably “no”, for the prison years wrought both a personal and political transformation. The Mandela who entered the cells of Robben Island in 1963 was charismatic and shrewd, yet often shallow and arrogant. The Mandela who emerged from Victor Verster Prison in 1990 was a mature statesman who understood that reconciliation and politics, not war or popular revolution, offered the only viable means of burying apartheid.

Those long years in jail gave him the moral and political authority to realise his vision. No ANC firebrand could question his adherence to the struggle – and no white South African could doubt the sincerity of his gestures of reconciliation. Mandela alone possessed the credibility to deliver the settlement that followed.

Even behind bars, he became indispensable. P W Botha, the last of the implacable white leaders, decided that he had to negotiate with his prisoner. At first, this happened indirectly, with Botha sending his justice minister and intelligence chief for dozens of secret meetings with Mandela. Later, the inmate was brought from his cell to the presidential residence to take tea with Botha – and the two men got along remarkably well. When de Klerk and Mandela began their fraught partnership, the Afrikaner was often infuriated by his interlocutor. But he always recognised that Mandela was the one man who could carry South Africa safely to the elections that followed in 1994.

This epic life teaches lessons of eternal relevance. The first is that nothing is inevitable. Today, we are often regaled with alleged inevitabilities, whether over a supposedly unreformable welfare state at home, or the apparently unstoppable decline of the West in the heat of Asian competition. The South Africa of three decades ago appeared set on an immovable course to civil war. Had Mandela accepted the doctrine of inevitability, then catastrophe would indeed have overwhelmed his country.

How was the allegedly inevitable avoided? The answer to this question provides the second enduring lesson of Mandela’s story. Political leadership can tip the balance of history. Politicians are not helpless playthings of irresistible forces. Instead, they can change history — or “make the weather”, in Churchill’s phrase – if they possess the resolve and the skill. Mandela’s courageous and enlightened leadership prevented catastrophe.

Like many great men, Mandela possessed glaring faults. He was shamelessly unfaithful to his first wife, Evelyn. He had strained relationships with his children. He was capable of monumental blunders, such as his decision to launch an armed struggle in 1960 that achieved nothing save for inviting the government to shut down the ANC by arresting its entire leadership, thereby setting back the anti-apartheid struggle by a decade or more.

Inexcusably, Mandela turned a blind eye to the appalling excesses of his second wife, Winnie. Yet he never claimed to be a saint and always protested when that label was foisted upon him. What, then, is his monument? It can be simply expressed: Nelson Mandela, in a moment of supreme crisis, saved his country. He did so by guile, generosity and indomitable will. He was the kind of man who comes upon this earth but rarely.